And like, on the one hand, if that is what the people there want…then power to them?
Two important details on the fluff principle: it isn’t exclusive to Reddit (it was first noticed on Hacker News, and it’s probably here too) and it’s a bit independent on what users want. It’s mostly the result of good content being often hard to judge, so people often skip it while upvoting barely passable content.
As you probably know, mods usually handle this by discouraging the barely passable content, either directly (“don’t post memes here”) or indirectly (random/small post requirements to cull out effortless posts). Or at least they did in Reddit.
I would say that it’s literal children […] although it may be more akin to self-centeredness.
I know which type of behaviour you’re talking about. I wouldn’t call it childishness, self-centredness, or even selfishness; it’s simply lack of reasoning and insight, as those users ruin the very subreddits that themselves would use, so I call it “stupidity”. And Reddit in special has an endemic stupidity problem. It’s a bunch of vicious cycles:
users ignore why rules exist →users post shit → mods take action → users whine → mods give up reasoning with users → nobody explains the rules → users ignore why rules exist
users post shit → mods create new rules → users rule-lawyer their way out → users post shit
users demand spoonfeeding → users are spoonfed → higher noise/info ratio → users give up looking for info due to high noise → users demand spoonfeeding
users assume words onto each others’ mouths → finger-pointing goes rampant → users feel the need to state things to avoid finger-pointing → assumptions get reinforced → users assume words onto each others’ mouths
etc.
I’m saying this because this “endemicity” of stupidity in Reddit is one of the reasons why moderation there is so fucking shitty and laborious, even with comparatively better tools (even now!) than Lemmy.